Mark Rogers - The Dead

“Maybe.”

“It’s happening out here too. Nobody knows what the hell’s going on… You sure she’s missing?”

“Yes.”

“She’s not out gabbing with someone?”

“Not as far as I know.”

“What are you going to do about the funeral?”

“Don’t know yet.”

“Are you going to hold it up?”

“It’s still on, as of now. We’re hoping she’ll turn up.”

“What if she doesn’t?”

“We’ll postpone it.”

“I understand. God, this is bad, kid. First your father, now this… Shit.”

“I can hardly believe it myself,” Gary said.

“But look,” Buddy went on. “Is there any way I could find out ahead of time? About the funeral? I don’t want to drive all the way to New Jersey and find out it’s off.”

“Yeah,” Gary said, head buzzing a bit from the Scotch. He and Linda (with a little help from Max) had almost killed the first bottle. He didn’t feel up to snap judgments.

“Still there?” Uncle Buddy asked.

“I’m thinking,” Gary said. “Look, you and Uncle Dennis are your own bosses. Suppose you had to stay here over the weekend? Maybe we could push the funeral back to Saturday or Sunday. If Mom hasn’t shown up by then…”

“I see what you mean. But do you think you can arrange it?”

“I’ll call the funeral home. Should still be open. Then I’ll ring you right back.”

“Okay. Sure hope your mother’s all right… By the way, what were those flowers your father really hated?”

Incredible, Gary thought. On the off-chance that his uncle might not have talked to the florist, he answered: “Jack-in-the-Pulpits.”

“Good,” Buddy said unenthusiastically. “I sent anthuriums.”

“Ah.”

“Look, you call the parlor.”

“Okay.”

Gary hung up.

“You know what he told me?” Linda asked.

“No, what?”

“He said I sounded too sexy to be your mother.”

“You were right about him sending the flowers, Max,” Gary called.

“The man’s a jerk,” Max replied, out in the living room. “You don’t have to be a prophet to figure out what he’s going to do.”

Maybe that’s why the anthuriums turned up in that first dream, Gary told himself. Your subconscious is just good with inductive logic-ha ha.

He looked up Van Nuys and Monahan’s number and called. Mr. Van Nuys answered on the first ring. Gary explained the situation.

“I’m afraid it may not be possible,” Van Nuys explained. “Moving the funeral back, I mean.”

“Why not?”

“Have you heard about this gravedigger’s strike?”

“No.”

“If they don’t get a contract with the Cemetery Association by Thursday night, they’re going out. And I just got word the arbitration’s collapsed. The sides are very far apart. There was a fistfight at the meeting this afternoon.”

“Oh Jesus.”

“I’m sorry, but if your father isn’t buried Thursday, he may not be buried for quite some time. The last strike lasted a month.”

“What did you do with all the bodies?”

“We had to… ah… rent space at a meat-packing plant. Very unpleasant business. The State Health Department overreacted about sanitation procedures, made things just about impossible. We might be completely stymied this time…”

“All right. Thursday it is, then.”

“I hope your mother shows up safe and sound, Gary.”

“Thank you,” Gary said. “I’ll see you tomorrow at the viewing.”

Hanging up, he told Linda and Max what Van Nuys had said. Given the situation, they agreed there was nothing else to be done. He called Buddy back, then sat down at the table with Linda.

“My Uncle says he just can’t get over what a sexy voice you have,” he told her.

“What an asshole,” Linda said.

“Last thing he said was, ‘You sure you’re man enough to handle her, kid?’”

“I’m just glad he’s on your side of the family,” she answered.

Linda turned in around ten, early for her. The booze had gotten to her.

But not to Gary. He was way too tense. He decided a long walk might calm him down, coupled with some more scotch. After filling a flask, he went out around ten thirty, leaving Max to sit up with the phone.

The night was more brisk than he expected, feeling more like late September than July. Before he got half a block he went back to the house and put on one of his father’s light jackets.

“Any calls?” he asked Max.

Max shook his head.

Gary went back out.

For a time he wandered aimlessly, finally going down to Beichmann Avenue, Bayside Point’s main drag. There was little traffic; the bars and pizza joints catering to the summer folks (Bennies, as they were known to the natives, for reasons Gary had never discovered) didn’t seem to be doing much business.

He headed farther and farther west on Beichmann until he realized he was almost at Van Nuys and Monahan’s; deciding he just didn’t want to lay eyes on the place, he turned south on Schultz.

He almost reached the end of the street before remembering that it dead-ended on an old cemetery. There were few lights up ahead, and the gravestones of the boneyard were invisible in the darkness, but the very idea of them, some dating back to the eighteen fifties, gave him the creeps. Halting, he wondered: would anything be left of a hundred-forty year old corpse?

Immediately an answer flashed into his mind: More than you might think. The response startled him; he found himself automatically assenting to it, even while reminding himself that he had no basis for an opinion.

“Them bones, them bones, them dry bones,” he sang softly. And unconsciously, at first. Then his mouth clamped shut.

But the tune kept floating through his head, stirring up long-buried associations: a chorus concert back in High School, the last episode of The Prisoner , Peter O’Toole’s rendition of the spiritual in the The Ruling Class . Strangely, in spite of the fact that Gary remembered O’Toole wearing a riding habit in the scene, he could only picture him in a uniform now, a Jersey state trooper’s, as he sang with horrible pleasure of the punishments the wicked surely deserved…

With an effort, Gary forced his thoughts onto another track, but succeeded only in getting another scene from the movie, the one in the House of Lords, row upon row of corpses rising from their seats, turning to look into the camera, into the audience’s face, into Gary’s face…

Now hear the word of the Lord.

Gary laughed nervously, trying once more to thrust it all from his mind. Turning on his heel, he retraced his steps till he struck Harrison Street. There he headed east.

Duncan Grady used to live in this neck of the woods, he recalled. He and Duncan had been good buddies in grammar school, but had drifted apart afterward. He wondered how Dunk was.

In a pool of light from a streetlamp, he saw a man opening the trunk of a dark sedan. As he got closer, he saw it was none other than Duncan himself, preparing to put a large telescope inside. Duncan looked up at his approach, owlish as ever, and squinted at him through his thick round glasses.

“Gary?” Duncan asked.

“Yeah. How’s it going, Dunk?”

Duncan laid the telescope in the trunk and closed the lid.

“Okay,” he said, and they shook hands. “Heard about your father. I’m real sorry.”

“There are a couple of viewings tomorrow,” Gary said.

“I know. I’ll try to make the second one.”

There was a pause.

“What are you doing back in town?” Gary asked, feeling uncomfortable. Despite his curiosity about how Duncan had been doing, he hadn’t wanted to talk to him. Or anyone, for that matter.